X Files Crossover
by Thor2000
Summary: When real superheroes start appearing, Mulder and Scully get help from Gil Grissom and CSI: Las Vegas to discover the truth out there. This story continues on my fictions CSI: Immortality, DS: Halloween and Ally McBeal: Dark Knight.
1. Chapter 1

It was a great day to be at the beach. Parents in short pants, short sleeves and tank top with both screaming children and bickering teenagers scouted out spots and surrounded themselves with coolers, radios, towels and umbrellas to shield the sun. With the Fort Lauderdale background behind them, and the sun up high, a mild few of the small planet ignored the frustrations of an unpleasant and unforgiving world to risk skin cancer for the perfect bronze body. A young girl chased after her ball while an adolescent boy chased his dog kicking up hot sand along the way. Sondra Greenberg looked up with annoyance at the sand hitting her and briefly noticed the fat husband of a middle-aged couple looking her over.

He was so not her type.

There was a lot more people now that she had arrived. She smelled barbequing nearby and heard the screams of college kids experimenting with beer and regressing back into a sub-human prototype for humanity. A five-year old boy stood beaming to her as she sat up, sipped her Pepsi and adjusted her sunglasses. Lifting her perfect swimmer's body among this sea of various body types, she took a brief gasp and jogged down to the water line. Along her way, a lifeguard shooed kids from a washed up jelly fish, a surfer lugged his board back out of the water and a skinny practical joker sneaked his fake shark fin to the tide. The water rose up over Sondra's ankles and wet sand oozed between her toes. Within time, it was up to her knees as she adjusted the bottom of her black bikini, tied back her long blonde tresses and then descended down to the water now up to over her waist. The faint images of the legs of people around her resembled out of focus pillars ranging in color from stark white to pale pink as Sondra dived effortlessly deeper and further into the wash of bubbles from her breath and the sea green world under the waves. She wanted to go further, as far as she could get. She wanted to see coral and fish, but what she got was a sharp pain in her leg. Her left leg locked up and she inadvertently screamed underwater. With her good leg, she pushed off from the bottom for the surface, but along the way the tide and waves played games with her. When she finally broke surface, she realized she was too far out to return on her own and screamed out for help.

The benevolent and excited cries of happy tourists as well as the crashing thunders of waves colliding with each other drowned her out. Sondra screamed again and tried thrashing for attention. She couldn't be sure anyone saw her.

"Don't worry, I got you." Someone said.

Sondra turned her head to her savior and then realized she was being taken out of the water. How was that possible? Had the coast guard seen her? Her rescuer wasn't hanging from a rope nor was he in the water. He was above it! His steely grin beamed assuredly to her as his black hair wafted in the wind thrashing over them. They were flying, but how was that possible? Down below her, people arched their heads up to her as her brunette angel carried her high up over the people looking up to her and then down near the deck of the restraunt. Crowds of people were gathering to meet her and her friend. As Sondra's right foot reached earth, she braced herself on a chair then recognized the Kryptonian attire of her rescuer and the red and yellow crest upon his blue bodysuit. Were they filming a movie? Where were the cameras?

"It's Superman! He's real!" People were yelling and screaming trying to examine the incredible special effects.

"It's Christopher Reeve! I thought he was dead!"

"No, it's Dean Cain!"

"How'd he fly? I don't see any wires!"

"Forget Orlando Bloom, I want his autograph!"

"Ma'am?" The man of steel turned to Sondra. "Are you okay now? I can take you to a hospital."

Sondra just barely shook her head. Superman looked to his throng of admirers and autograph seekers and just grinned embarrassingly at the attention. People were running to meet him and were trying to touch him. One lady lifted up his cape to look underneath for the wires that carried him, but he just gently suggested everyone back away from him. He turned his head up and once again took to the skies up over the hundreds of people still rushing to say hello to him. Sondra's blue eyes turned skyward as the flying hero became a speck in the distance over Miami.

Several hours later and across the country, throngs of people rioted in the Seattle streets. No one knew why or how it had started, but parents ran carrying their children and storeowners fought to gate up their stores. Glass shattered up and down the market way as looters made the incident worse to get what they could. Two police officers remained trapped in their car as throngs of figures tried to overturn them. The ocean of humanity went on forever around them. They had a report that there was a department store burning on the corner and a restraunt under fire. Police cars came from eight blocks away to secure the police.

"National Guard!" Officer Chris Wright hid behind a burning van as he avoided get shot by gang members. "We need the National Guard!" A crying child distracted him as he shifted his gaze from his shooters. Where was she? He turned away and shot again at the punks representing absence of respect for authority. A lethal lit cocktail of burning gasoline in a bottle flew over Wright's head and he scrambled to new cover. The family drugstore that had once been behind him suddenly ceased to exist.

"Return to your homes!" A bullhorn atop a patrol car blared out and was suddenly hit by trash and bullets. Officers were chasing looters and teens with guns. An African-American girl being pinned down to be handcuffed by officers was kicking and swearing. Her best friend cracked a glass bottle over the helmet of an officer.

The sky suddenly cracked open and a torrent of cold piercing rain started hitting the earth. A lightning bolt streaked across the sky while protesting criminals were deserted by their partners in terror. The officers barricaded in their patrol car watched relieved through rain-covered windows as protestors fled from the weather. Hordes of rioters fled for cover as Chris Wright rejoined his partners. Thunder cracked again as the cold wet weather washed away the temperament of a couple hundred bad-tempered civilians.

"I thought we were going to have ten days of clear sky." Officer Ben Moody looked to Chris.

"Look!" Chris pointed heavenward to the Viking-figure being pulled through the air by his hammer. Ben flashed upon images of comic book characters and thought the massive leather and red-caped shape resembled the Odinson known as Thor, but that was impossible. His buddies had seen it too.

"We didn't see that." Captain Matt Pierce answered from his rain-streaked lips.

It was also night in Chicago, but it wasn't raining as five blue and white patrol cars raced after Victor Manuel Rodriguez. Wanted in five states for trafficking illegal drugs, Rodriguez and his four compatriots continued to show their distaste for normal people and normal life by smashing through cars at stoplights, driving over the sidewalk without regard to the people in his way and shooting point blank at the police cars trying to get around him. He had dumped his cargo five miles back and had left seventeen people crippled or dead in his death race from the law. He was not going to jail nor was he giving himself up. He was willing to do what it took to escape.

Coming up on another red light, he was suddenly awash in truck lights and smashed broadside over fifty feet. Two of his guys were killed outright in the car crash. Grabbing his bag of cash and his Uzi, Rodriguez started firing his clip into the police and fled on foot toward the stores. Rather than holing up where he could be caught, he charged down the side toward empty alleyways and met someone else instead. Opening fire on the female shape, the clips from his rapidly emptying Uzi deflected back upon him; the strikes of light off silver bracelets revealed a dark-haired Nicole Kidman clone in a gold and star-spangled bustier. She was more built and spectacular than the blonde actress she resembled and his bullets weren't stopping her rapidly moving arms.

Officers converged on the alley and took their places ready to enter the alley as Rodriguez was spit out from the darkness without his gun. Striking the windshield hard of a stopped patrol car, he looked as if something had knocked the life out of him. Officers Garrett and Dodson looked into the alley simultaneously as a bent Uzi hit the ground. When they looked up to see where it had come from, they noticed a brief glance of the impressively endowed brunette in the gold and American bustier vanishing up and over the rooftops.

"That's it!" Dodson told his partner. "No more comic books in the squad car!"

In Las Vegas, Nevada, brunette and attractive Monica Uchtman clutched her purse as she finished her last shift at the Golden Nugget Restraunt. Her heels scuffed the sidewalk as she waved goodbye to her friends and then continued on her way across the parking lot next door. Out of her eyesight, three figures rushed to her side of the street to come up behind her. They grinned amongst themselves and shared non-spoken looks of male fondness for this seeming goddess before them, but instead of treating her as a person, they elected to control her. In their mind, it was Monica's fault for the way her ample bosom bounced within her tight sweater or how her skirt framed her butt.

A brief shriek came from her lips when they dragged her. They didn't care for her purse; it landed where she dropped it. A hand clamped down on her small lips and her brown eyes rounded with sheer terror. It was happening too fast. Who was attacking her? How many were there? She felt herself dragged backward from the parking lot to the litter-strewn alley next to the liquor store and then her back hitting the side of the condemned warehouse. As she could see were those eyes staring into her and raping her mentally and physically. She felt hands pulling at her skirt and underwear. Tears poured from her eyes hoping for compassion, but her attacker couldn't be counted as human. No normal human being treated another person like his. His Hispanic eyes were angry, furious and animalistic. Nothing that could possibly be considered human existed there. His partners held Monica to the cold ground. Her breath fought for oxygen from her heaving chest. Her favorite brown sweater was being ripped from her body with her bra as Monica closed her eyes in shame. She didn't want to die like this. Would anyone know where she was? She closed off as many of her senses off from the attack and waited for it to end. Just let it end. The groping then stopped and so did the sensation of weight atop her. There was the sound of something slicing the air around her as Monica opened her eyes.

Twenty feet off the ground in the light of the streetlights was a vast spider-web. It stretched the full scope of the streetlights twenty feet apart to the corners of the two buildings perpendicular to them. Her attacker was hung upside down with his pants still down. His partners in the hobby of criminal and inhuman behavior were stuck to the long thin threads along with him. Traffic was stopping and gawking to look at the sight while another handful of witnesses looked, stared and pointed hysterically delirious and overjoyed to the sky toward the red and blue figure swinging up above the lights of the Marriott Hotel on the Strip. People were screaming the same name.

"Spiderman! It's Spiderman." They yelled. "He's real!"

The stress was too much for Monica and she keeled backward onto the sidewalk with pedestrians running to help her. When she opened her eyes again, a paramedic was loading her into the back of an ambulance. Catherine Willows and Sara Sidle from the crime lab were with her to take care of her. An electrical truck lifted police officers to cut down the three rapists.

"Greg," Gil Grissom was leading the research on the illegal creation covering the air above the traffic. "I want samples of that web to the lab ASAP. I want to know what it is and who made it?"

"Isn't it obvious!" Greg was just as excited as the witnesses telling the same story. "It's Spiderman!"

Gil just made a non-impressed look of authority to remind him he was not as excited as the comic book fans around him. His childhood excitement momentarily stifled, Greg turned to scrape some web off the light pole and stuff it into a plastic container. Behind him, Warrick Brown came under and around the crime tape around the entrance alley. His hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jacket, he was trying to refrain from grinning as the city went crazy with more Spiderman sightings.

"Catherine and Sara took the vic to the hospital." He revealed as police fenced off curious by-standers and screaming reporters. "They think she's in shock, but she should be okay. You remember Monica from the…"

"Yes, I do remember her." Grissom lifted his head up reflecting on Monica's resemblance to a felon he once knew. "Anything else?"

"There's a guy who wants to talk to you about this case." Warrick smirked a bit.

"Let me guess?" Grissom grinned abashedly himself. "Peter Parker? Clark Kent? Stan Lee?"

Warrick just sighed and stepped out of Grissom's line of sight toward the brunette haired male figure in the dark blue suit and white shirt. The would-be informant didn't wear a nameplate or a tie, but Grissom knew who he was.

"Mr. Grissom." FBI Agent Fox Mulder pressed his hand forward to shake hands. "We meet again…"

"Of all the people in all the world, he just had to return to mine." Grissom tilted his head quite intrigued toward Warrick.


	2. Chapter 2

PART TWO

Outside of the Las Vegas Police Headquarters building, two shapely legs poked from the driver's side door of a dark blue BMW preceding the attractive guise of Government agent Dana Scully. Garbed in a form-fitting jade green Armani skirt and jacket with a French-tailored white blouse, she rubbed the back of her neck tiredly upon approach to the building and passed by two officers exiting the building. Her royal blue eyes surveyed her surroundings for the minute before recognizing another female law enforcement official and producing her badge to reveal her identity.

"Federal agent Dana Scully…" She looked up to Catherine Willows of the crime lab. "I'm looking for my associates."

"They've commandeered one of our conference rooms." Catherine was into her eighteenth hour on a hit and run case and her eleventh cup of coffee. "Just follow the sight-seers."

Dana gave a look around the corner to the officers and forensic specialists standing and staring through the windows into one of the rooms. Exchanging a non-verbal look of intrigue with Willows, Dana continued on to rendezvous with her partner and Willows went off on her path. Upon her approach, Nick Stokes looked up from his mug of coffee to check out the shapely agent just seconds before his partner and friend Warrick Brown. Dana noticed their looks undressing her and just glossed over the concept of guys admiring her for being attractive. Entering the room, she then caught the looks of her partner Fox Mulder and two CIA agents who had been connected for monitoring their investigation into these alleged superheroes sighting. Standing and perusing satellite and ground photos with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his necktie loosened was Jeff Christensen, supposedly chosen for his interest in comic book mythology. At the computer with a doughnut in his mouth was Mike Hoskins trying to break his nicotine habit. He turned round briefly to check out Scully and then turned back to his laptop to bite a piece of his doughnut and wash it down with a sip of coffee.

"What happened in Denver?" Mulder was first to react.

"A hundred and sixty four reports of a humanoid figure made of rock ranging in color from red to orange to brown…" Dana reported with a suppressed yawn. "Not even the witnesses were absolute, but several of them insisted it had vanished into an angular craft piloted by figures in blue."

"The Thing and the Fantastic Four?" Hoskins made a refrained chuckle. "I wish I could have seen that. I wonder if Sue Storm looked like Jessica Alba. I thought she should have been played by Nicole Kidman."

"Kidman makes a better Jean Grey." Christensen remarked off hand. "Bryan Singer really screwed that up. Maybe Reese Witherspoon…"

"Could we get back on task?" Scully interjected out loud.

"Here's our updated list of sightings…" Mulder handed a file to his red-haired partner. "Now, as far as we know, we've been getting repeating reports of superhuman slash costumed activity occurring consistently on a worldwide level with concentrated sightings in the United States. Beginning with the Batman three months ago saving those women from the icy bridge in Boston, we've had on-coming media reports of more so-called superhero activities but not of unidentified figures. All of these figures have been of well-known recognized and copyrighted personas right from the publications of Marvel and DC Comics."

"A green She-Hulk in Nashville, Green Lantern outside of Seattle…" Christensen started pulling out photos and video images. "The X-Men in Toronto, and just today Superman in Fort Lauderdale, Wonder Woman in Chicago and the seventh Spiderman report here in Las Vegas."

"At first," Mulder continued. "The bureau thought these were promotions for the movies, but both the publishers who own these characters have disavowed these claims. The one man who revolutionized the graphic novel industry, Stan Lee himself, says he was briefly visited by a young woman he described as Zatanna, a DC comic second stringer mystic."

"What did she want?"

"According to him," Mulder replied. "Her own comic."

"Now," Hoskins was still typing at the laptop. "Our boys at NASA have been good enough to allow us a hook-up with their satellite to keep track of these superhuman flight figures of the Class Three archetypes."

"I don't know the first thing about superheroes." Scully shook her head. "Class Three?"

"The term superhero is a vague colloquialism for ill-defined type of costumed crime-fighters often with superhuman and/or paranormal abilities ranging from glory hounds, protectors, defenders, vigilantes…." Christensen sipped his coffee as he caught his breath. "Class One pertains to human-level beings with enhanced or technological devices such as the Batman or Captain America."

"Class Two…" Hoskins continued. "Is the mutant, stuck-in-lab-accident power level mutation prevalent through so many stories, like Spiderman or the X-Men…"

"And Class Three is the off the scale alien being." Mulder directed Scully to Hopkins monitor. It displayed a map of the United States crisscrossed by numerous colored lines connected at points where the superhero sightings were occurring with rescues and acts crime prevention. "Hoskins has been tracking the Class Threes and identifying them by color. Superman in blue, Wonder Woman in gold, Thor in white, Power Girl and Nightwing near St. Louis, Captain Marvel, uh, the Billy Batson version, not the alien version, in orange…"

"They've all been identified?"

"Not all of them." Hoskins typed in another sighting from Fargo, North Dakota. "The yellow line seems to be some sort of fire-being like Firestorm or the Human Torch. The witness accounts are conflicting."

"I don't think we're dealing with normal people using special effects to become these characters. This is far too widespread for that." Mulder folded his arms before his chest. "I'm leaning more to some sort of crossing-over phenomenon from another alternate reality. Both Marvel and DC dominate the comic book/graphic novel genre and their continuities more or less mirror and match each other with common ingredients involving aliens, mythological deities, tolerance…"

"You're suggesting that we're being invaded by individuals from an alternate reality created from the group consciousness of an army of writers and comics geeks." Christensen looked at Mulder with his eyebrow arched with piqued interest.

"No, I'd say its more like a team of people who have been describing incidents and events that they've been subconsciously perceiving from another reality." Mulder stood by his theory. "Maybe this link over the years has been wearing thin over several years and these characters have become aware of our world. If that's the case, how much longer do we have before their more sinister counterparts pass over as well? We're talking about beings with the power to register disasters equal to Hurricane Katrina or 9/11."

"An actual merged Marvel/DC Universe concurrent with our own?" Hoskins mused over that theory. "That's a bit out there even for you, Mulder."

"Marvel and DC don't even use each others characters." Christensen pointed out.

"I'm not talking about how they are perceived and written about in our world." Mulder looked to Scully then toward Christensen. "I'm saying that maybe these fictions we have in our world are based on clairvoyant images from another timeline existing beside our own and that the perceptible errors and differences between the novelizations are the product of the writers faint yet erroneous perceptions of these alternate world perceptions."

"That would mean…" Scully tried to understand Mulder's theory. "That every possible continuity in literature and entertainment with like ingredients could possibly share its own reality within separate existing timelines concurrent to our own."

"But then…" Hoskins seemed to drop into a trance as he considered the possibility. "What are they spread apart so far and in foreign cities? Superman should be in Metropolis, Illinois and… just about everyone else in New York City."

"Maybe they took a vow to spread themselves out?" Christensen guessed.

"Excuse me…" CSI Tech Greg Sanders gently rapped on the door as he entered. A brief moment to crack a smile as he checked out Dana Scully, he lifted up his computer printout from the analysis of the giant spider web. "Gentlemen, and lady, my examination of Spiderman's web. Polymer-elastic resin similar to but not identical to the material pantyhose is made from, but far more elastic and stronger than any other known polymer."

"You don't mind if we have our labs confirm your findings." Christensen took the read-out and looked it over.

"Problem." Greg reacted a bit nervously. "Exactly one hour after it was supposedly created, all our samples and the on-site webbing dissolved into ether. There's nothing left."

"Exactly like the Spiderman mythology says it does." Hoskins smirked a bit and took another doughnut.


	3. Chapter 3

PART THREE

Just an hour ago on the strip, a screaming female tourist from Clermont, Florida watched her purse being stolen from her shoulder and then the brief image of the thief being pulled up off his feet from traffic and strung up from the neon sign outside the Marriott Hotel and Casino. She got her purse back, but by time Mulder and Scully reached the scene, the police had their assailant in custody and scavenging souvenir-seekers had taken the last traces of the webbing from the location. Their next objective was to trace the path the web-slinger had taken in his departure, but that theoretical route took then into the best untraveled side of a seedier Las Vegas where prostitutes grouped on sidewalks and down on their luck citizens avoided eye contact with other pedestrians. A street gang acted like they owned the neighborhood and mulled outside of an all-night Laundromat. In their minds, they controlled this street and everyone else should respect their crimes, but Dana Scully looked upon them and shook her head disappointedly at the thirteen-year-olds throwing away their lives and futures for an existence of forever running from the law.

"We've lost his path." Mulder looked up to gated and barred apartments and boarded-up deserted tenements. "I'm going to head back to the strip and try to pick up on that last web line he left."

"Maybe he slipped back to Peter Parker and returned to the Daily Planet." Scully replied half-sarcastic.

"Bugle." Mulder corrected her. "The Planet is where Clark Kent worked."

"Whatever." Scully braced while Mulder turned at the broken red light for a side street.

"I take it you don't like my theory."

"Well, it's…" Dana watched a bag lady picking through trash outside her window. "Definitely one of your most-creative theories."

"I never heard what you thought." Mulder looked back upon her as he drove past a fenced in parking lot.

"I'm leaning more to the costumed individual with special effects and a lot of erroneous witness testimony." Scully spoke just as an explosion racked the car. Whatever had happened had jostled Mulder's rented SUV. Hitting the brakes, he looked to the human figure that had been thrown across the street and now slumped to the pavement under the streetlights. Scully pulled her gun and bolted from the car holding her weapon on the store window from which the victim had flown. Mulder grabbed his gun and covered her after setting the vehicle from park.

"FBI!" Dana posed determined and aggressive. "Come out where I can see you!" She screamed at the moving shape within the shattered drugstore. From behind the open storefront, there was a definite shadow moving around. Even as Mulder called for local police back up, he heard a low roar he thought sounded like a grizzly bear. A dark shape with a green skin tone passed a window toward them. Scully's eyes widened at the huge form coming toward her. It was massive and extremely muscular. She had seen something like this in a movie on HBO with Eric Bana. Of all the fictional adventurers she could have met, why did it have to be him? He was possibly the most dangerous and less predictable character of the whole lot.

"Scully, lower your gun. He doesn't like them." Mulder's eyes looked upon the Incredible Hulk and became a kid once more in his presence. He was taller than human and three people wide. A frustrated look covered his face from under that wild dark green hair. Curled up under his tremendous left arm was a small blonde female child huddled to his chest.

"He's definitely not CGI." Mulder was in the shadow of one of his childhood idols.

"Mulder, I know the girl." Scully looked to the Hulk and back to her partner as the gamma-spawned beast hesitantly marched out into the street. From his mighty lungs came a rumbling growl warning them not to tick him off.

"Kimberly Amelia Henckel." Scully continued. "Amber Alert for her out of Cheyenne, Wyoming. She's been missing for three weeks." She carefully reholstered her weapon, and carefully treaded forward to the massive green figure protecting the six-year-old. She didn't say a thing; she reached out for the child to take her. Looking down on the young innocent, the Hulk bemoaned the loss of his new friend, tenderly stroked her fragile blonde head and allowed the attractive FBI agent to take her from him. He blinked his eyes trying to guess what to do next, but the decision was soon made for him. The shrill cry of police sirens ahead of ambulances reminded him that he didn't like the police anymore that the United States Armed Forces. Gritting his teeth into an annoyed snarl, he left the crippled and delirious pedophile across the street where he had thrown him and started running the other way around cars and on-lookers. Part of the street shook under Mulder and Scully when the gamma-spawned brute jumped over a cable van, increased his momentum over the restraunt and then started leaving tremors under him as his leaps spread over city blocks before taking him into the Las Vegas desert.

Two hours after leaving Kimberly to children's services, Dana Scully was not completely sure what she had seen. What had once been another annoying X-File had escalated into a media event that the press was calling publicity for another comic book movie. Nicole Kidman was supposedly playing both Jean Grey and Wonder Woman of the Justice League of America while Scott Bakula played the human half of the Hulk. Witnesses that had seen Superman were convinced that Christopher Reeve had faked his death to get in shape to play the Man of Steel again. Michael Keaton once more disavowed rumors he was playing the Batman while Tobey McGuire was confronted in Hollywood by a figure announcing that he was the real and only Captain America. With him had been a Tom Selleck look-alike who claimed his name was Tony Stark, a man who also took the identity of Iron Man.

"Room service," Dana tossed the keys to her rental car aside as she tiredly retreated alone to her room in the Sands Hotel and phoned her hotel's front desk. "Is it too late for me to get something to eat?" She cracked her back and groaned for a hot bath. "Oh, good, I'd like to get a chef salad, a tuna sandwich on wheat with iced tea." She cracked open her eleventh floor balcony door for some fresh air. "Twenty minutes, thank you very much."

She hung up the phone and removed her jade green Armani jacket to suspend it on a hanger near her bed. Rubbing her wrist after removing her watch, she removed her earrings and sat upon her bed to remove her shoes. As she sat, her cell phone buzzed from her skirt pocket.

"Scully, here."

"Scully," It was Walter Skinner, one of her FBI superiors. "Is Mulder with you?"

"Better not," Dana wandered into the bathroom to test the water in the shower. "I'm about to rest and compose myself before meeting up with him tomorrow morning."

"I'm leaving Mulder in Vegas with Christensen and Hoskins to represent the bureau." Skinner was reading their faxed reports. "I want you to meet with Stuart Vandal from Interpol in Toronto. The authorities there are holding some alleged superhumans in custody. I need you to represent the FBI there."

"I'm hitting the next flight." Dana said good-bye to her nice shower and hoped her personal hygiene could last another twenty-four hours. Clicking off her cell phone, she sighed lightly and considered canceling her dinner order. Outside of the hotel, the sound of distant sirens wafted into the room over the balcony. The sound of the fire engines attracted Dana's interest enough to make her want to get a look. Sliding over her glass door, she stepped out to get a look of the city under her feet and gaze across the horizon. The sky was a dull purple against the black mountains in the distance. There were more lights below that stars in the sky. A faint aroma of smoke was detected in the air. Her hands unconsciously reached up to her blouse and paused. Her mind was somewhere else. Wasn't there something she had to do?

"What am I doing?" She silently asked herself. Taking herself back off the balcony, she re-entered the room and paused again transfixed by the sound of more fire engines racing through the city streets. There was a major fire somewhere, and something was convincing her that she could help, but not as Dana Scully. There was something else, someone else. What was wrong with her? She was forgetting what she was doing. Another personality was tugging her away from her job.

Could Mulder have been off in his deduction? Was it possible these heroes needed some unusual way to appear in this reality? Could it be possible their essencestook overhuman hosts? Whoever wanted to borrow Scully's body was strong and powerful. She could feel their strength, intensity and determination. It felt almost incredible. She felt she could do anything. Her eyes nervously rolled back from her hands and what they might be capable of now, then to her phone. She had to tell Mulder, but her fingers cracked through it as if it was a child's toy. Giving way to her new personality, her feet turned back in a hurry to the balcony…

And her feet vanished up into the sky...


	4. Chapter 4

4

When dawn broke in New York City, pedestrians started filing into the sidewalks and automobiles started congesting the highways. The city's homeless lifted their faces to sky grateful to be alive, and the pulse of the city began pumping once more, building to a pitch in what was supposed to be one of the greatest cities in the world. However, for every little great city, there was the lowest possible denominator trying to destroy it. They were the ones who had become disposable human beings: dishonest cretins who refused to live in society by showing their distaste for it by stealing and robbing whatever they could take. As the storeowner of the jewelry shop on Third Avenue commenced with opening his business early for a new client, he was hustled in by street thugs and pinned to the floor in shock. Young punks barely fifteen had decided to toss their lives into the sewer by brandishing stolen guns, shattering glass cabinets and taking anything they could steal. They didn't want the money for anything worthwhile like food or clothes; they wanted to throw away their lives and futures for the disgusting habit of inhaling poisonous powders into their bodies in order to reach out closer to death itself. The whole degenerating spectacle barely took two minutes and even with the loud shrill of the store alarm screaming, the two rejects of human life had what they wanted and were racing back for the darkness of the criminal underground to ignore their respective consciences and reject their natural human instincts for propriety. Before they could reach the condemned and deserted tenement they had forced themselves to dwell within away from normal people, they were knocked to their feet and sent sprawling to the sidewalk by the sight of a large round shield painted in red, white and blue. One boy landed hard breaking his jaw and his left wrist. The other boy tripped and slid into the street into the street. Ricocheting off a mailbox, the shield returned to the hand of a figure disguising himself from the public in a long overcoat. Secreting it away under his coat, he waited for his similarly disguised traveling companion to return to him after having stringing up the two felons for the authorities before traveling up the block and anonymously returning the stolen jewelry to the store.

In Moonville, Ohio, the State Police was on a fifty-mile stretch of Highway 85 looking for James Lionel Bartwell, a known pedophile and drug-user who had promised to kill his girlfriend for sending him to prison. He had escaped with three other men, but they were now recovered and Bartwell was still on the run. Helicopters checked every local shed and barn, hounds dragged officers along train tracks and water boats dragged and searched the nearby Cuyahoga River. Bartwell was currently on everyone's wish list, and they wanted him back in prison where he had worked so hard to get himself sent. The sky in the area was growing gray, and the rain would likely make the manhunt harder. In the midst of stopping cars, the state police heard the hum of jet engines and cocked their heads to the sky. A large bug-shaped craft had emerged from out of the horizon coming toward them and stopped thirty feet above their heads, its jet engines warping and distorting the air around it for an accurate look. Amidst the downdraft of the strange craft, a hatch opened and a form was tossed out. Trussed up by rope and restraints, the body of James Lionel Bartwell had been dumped off as human trash back to the authorities, and two men believing themselves Booster Gold and the Blue Beetle once again began listening to radio transmissions for something to keep them busy.

Gil Grissom hadn't been keeping up with these tabloid stories of people running around helping the police, catching criminals or saving mankind from themselves. His life was bugs and the secrets they could tell him through entomology to solve crimes. He strode through the Las Vegas CSI offices with a bit of a swagger carrying and mugging over with the glee of a child on Christmas day over his specimen in his glass beaker. Among his team of intellectuals and science geeks, his favorite colleague was probably Sara Sidle. She probably knew him better than anyone else and rumor was they had feelings for each other.

"What do you have?" Sara looked up with the curiosity of a young girl.

"Blattus domesticatus." Grissom held up his tiny subject. "Other wise known as the common cockroach, but there's nothing really common about them. I call this subject Irving because I found him in that house on Irving which had exploded."

"So he survived a gas explosion to become the newest member of your collection." Sara observed.

"Right between my fetal pig and mosquito larvae." Grissom beamed with restrained childhood excitement. "By the way, there's a body in a dumpster on Decatur. Take Greg with you. He needs the experience; feel free to let him get dirty."

"Right…" Sara looked over her shoulder. "Greg…"

"What?" Greg had wanted to get fieldwork, but he also felt as if he was going through hazing as a new CSI. "I just left the sewers with Nick after collecting body parts."

"This body is in one piece…" Grissom told him.

"Right…" Greg looked to Sara. She was musing a bit of a grin at his quandary. Knowing he had wanted this, he just took a deep breath, turned round in his damp and squishing shoes and decided to willingly accompany her on the examination of the body in the dumpster, but he didn't get very far. After just a few feet past a corner, he felt a hand on his arm grab and drag him into the trace lab. His eyes looked up to Fox Mulder standing over him. His hair was partially combed, his clothes rumpled as if he had slept in them and his eyes slightly lucid as if he had not had any sleep in over seven days.

"I want you to tell me what that is." Mulder slammed down a vial of a white, opaque substance.

"Looks like ejaculation."

"Maybe, maybe not…" Mulder looked at Greg. "You won't know till you check."

"Excuse me…" Grissom turned into the room taking offense at the treatment of his people. "You don't have the authority to come in here and take hostage of my employees."

"Fox Mulder, FBI…" Mulder flashed his Government ID into Grissom's face as proof he could. "As a duly authorized investigative agent of the Federal Government, I have the right to commandeer any local or state crime lab in the course of an investigation and right now, this sample is in the hands of your employee."

"Grissom…" Greg looked to his superior. Still standing in the hallway, Sara shifted her weight to her left hip and folded her arms before her chest. Looking from her to Greg, Grissom made an uncommitted look and cleared his throat.

"Process it, Greg…" He spoke. "Then join Sara in the field. Agent, a word?" He turned to Mulder.

Greg turned to process the substance and Sara departed wandered away with a few thoughts for herself. Mulder rolled his eyes gratingly annoyed at the bearded CSI head and trailed him into a small and darkened room adorned with insect posters and shelves of biological specimens. Standing in the doorway between light and shadow, he watched from a safe position as Gil Grissom maneuvered around his desk, seated himself with austere but hesitant authority and tilted his head up to remove and clean his glasses.

"So what case is this now?" Gil looked up with mild annoyance. "Still following around people in Halloween costumes?"

"My partner vanished last night from a sealed room." Mulder spoke still checking out the room. "She had just been given a new assignment and was supposed to catch a flight this morning, but she never gave me the details. Her belongings were still in the room, barred against myself which suggests to me she was taken through another non-conventional means. That substance was coated on her room phone and the railing of her balcony. Sending away for analysis would have taken too long and your lab is among the best in the country."

"How do you think this relates to your case?"

"I don't have enough to venture a guess right now." Mulder lifted his head to Grissom with a distant glare from his eyes. "The abduction of an agent in the field takes priority over everything else."

"My lab is your lab…" Grissom tried to be accommodating, but Mulder was too engrossed in his thought that he was unaware he had turned away coldly from their talk. For some reason, he was recalling the movie where Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder had set forth into the sky for a flying ballet above the skyline of Metropolis. Not figuring Scully to fall into a childlike infatuation for a hero of godlike attributes, he instead wondered if she could have departed under her own power for other reasons, but what would they be? Skinner told her to head for Toronto. She wouldn't pass on an order to pursue something else. What was he missing here? Something had happened, but what? Something powerful had occurred here, but what?

"Scully…" Mulder stood a few feet from the fingerprints lab in the open CSI corridor. "Where are you?"

Another state, another jurisdiction, another crime by more disposal human beings… two brothers and their cousin had been selling illegal substances undercover for seven years, but when they shot and murdered Michael Burns, a concerned father for being brave enough to drive them from out of a Denver neighborhood, they had passed the line of no return. Javier Martinez told his cousins the police had a warrant for their arrest, and after shooting and killing one more person, they had stolen and recklessly sped away in a dark red SUV racing away at speeds of 90 miles an hour down Interstate 70. Jorge Cruz was doing the driving as his brother Carlos fired at police through the skylight with a stolen automatic weapon and Javier firing from out the back. Two police cars chasing them had turned into five and then seven more with two state police vehicles and a police chopper following their run from justice. Motorists were being run off the road, bullets were cracking bulletproof glass and high-velocity shells were littering the interstate behind three youths with conjoined destinies in the electric chair. Still haplessly convinced that he should stay out of prison, Jorge gunned the engine of his stolen vehicle plowing through slow drivers and demolishing the way through and around commuters in his path. Carlos dived down inside after being shot from the police chopper. Despite a bullet in his left lung, Carlos gritted his teeth, checked his weapon and tried to fight off unconsciousness and human conscience to kill those whose mission was to serve and protect. Javier took a shot to the head from the chopper this time. Watching a police cruiser attempting a pit maneuver, Jorge drove the highway patrol officer off the roof proving he had no recourse against criminal acts. His eyes turned to the road next and the presence before him. The blonde beauty in the flapping red cape and shapely costume braced herself and reached to his speeding vehicle…

… and flipped it over her head!!!!

It sounded as if thunder cracked and the sky had opened up as ten tons of mechanical American engineering flipped up front over end and then crashed down to asphalt and earth, tumbling and throwing around the lawless contents within it. Jorge's head hit the windshield and his ribs cracked against the steering wheel. Carlos was flung hard into the road and skidded and slid over loose rocks and road debris with his head flailing from his shoulders. The cousin was tossed around within the vehicle for a few minutes; it seemed as if it had all occurred in slow motion. The SUV landed upside down, its weight crushing down on the roof. Barely a second behind, police cars made a wall of defense around the flipped truck and the murderous drug-traffickers trying to crawl from it. Police and law enforcement grabbed their guns, revolvers and rifles and hastened upon the strange woman before them. Her long blonde hair flitted around her head as she realized what was happening. She turned briefly revealing the proud red letter emblazoned against yellow on her bust and stepped back from orders directed at her. At one time, she had carried a gun herself, she had a position in law enforcement or something like it and had even worked among their colleagues. Instead of allowing herself to be taken against her will, the mind of Dana Scully tossed back her now long flaxen locks, held her chest out as she looked to the sky and quickly ascended into it. Her arms didn't rise above her head to maneuver her powerful shapely form until she had reached fifty feet up into the air. Police and law officers followed her trajectory with the tips of their guns before looking for survivors in the crashed SUV.

"Agent?"

Mulder snapped awake from a chair in the CSI break room. A now warm Pepsi before him and two-thirds of his second Hostess cake before him, he tried focusing his eyes back on Greg Sanders with a file on the residue from Scully's hotel room.

"Agent?" Greg had processed the substance. "The soluble is a mixture of polyester synthetics, dacron, human epithelials, processed wool, human hair and a host of trace elements from iron to xenon but the gamut of it… the majority of is water with an electro-magnetic signature. My best guess, it's some sort of waste or sludge… but it has no discernible waste material in it. It's as if it was collected from a combination of sources in contact with each other in a water solution except that it is bonded at a molecular level."

"It's ectoplasm." Mulder perused the report.

"Ectoplasm…" Greg rolled his eyes thinking. "You mean like, ghosts and séances…"

"Yeah…" Mulder yawned and turned his head trying to wake or rouse himself into full consciousness. "You did good. Go join your colleague in the field."

"Yes sir…" Greg stepped back ready to join Sara.

"Now, where am I going to get a parapsychologist that will give me the time of day…" Mulder shrunk into his seat once more and moodily sighed tiredly toward the ceiling.


	5. Chapter 5

5

A continent away, Boston was in the aftermath of repeated Batman sightings. Witnesses were claiming they were still seeing the dark-knight detective racing and jumping across rooftops, but the police were no longer chasing after those claims. Crossing rain-swept Beacon Street under a cloudy sky broken by traces of sunlight, Elaine Vassal danced a few steps up into the brownstone of her best friend and the woman who had taken him away from her. William Collins was not only a popular writer and a renowned paranormal researcher, but the man Elaine felt was destined to be her husband if only a certain skinny lady lawyer had not stolen him away from her. At least in the back of thoughts, she could take those children away and pretend for a few days that they were her daughters.

"Oh my little babies…" Elaine Vassal shined over the girls she was supposed to have with William. "How would you all like to get makeovers?" Both the girls began grinning.

"You bleach one hair on their beautiful brunette little heads and I'll ship you to Tibet in a crate marked perishable!" Ally snarled adorably.

"But I want hair just like Aunt Lainey's!" Five-year-old Georgia Collins chirped excitedly.

"No!"

Elaine just mused a bit hurt and guided the little angels out to her new convertible. Her last car had been totaled after sliding on the bridge into Cambridge three months prior. Closing the door to her Dalton Street home, Ally backed to the door, took a deep breath and exhaled deeply. She loved her babies, but they had both developed reputations as little monsters. Only her mother-in-law, Angelique Collins, and Elaine had any sort of control over them. In their absence, Ally longed for private time with the prince charming she had finally made into her husband.

"They're gone!" She cheered and charged into the kitchen. William Collins turned and was grabbed by her tiny hands as her lips overwhelmed his. His wife was hysterically pleased and desperate for alone time without tiny screams, rushing little feet and hungry little tummies between mountains of laundry and heavy court cases at her firm. "I made a reservation at the Tipton for dinner, but first, you, me, upstairs and naked."

"My back is still bothering me."

"Tough!" She looked at him with the ferocity and look of a determined lion. "The weekend is ours… Finally! I want you to make me feel like a woman! I want you…"

The phone rang on the wall.

"…To not answer that phone!!"

"Hello…" William picked up the receiver.

"You're paying for that when you get upstairs." Ally realized it had to be her mother-in-law. She always phoned when she wanted to be intimate with her son. "Who is it?"

"Mulder… he's in Las Vegas…"

"Tell him to marry Dana and get a life." Ally picked an apple up out of the basket on the kitchen counter. "I'll be upstairs to play Adam and Eve." She tossed the apple to her husband and slipped through the swinging doors into the front room to head upstairs. Rolling his eyes, the publisher writer wondered what sort of paranormal research his old friend wanted this time.

"What kind of sighting did you have this time at Area 51?" He took a bite from the apple.

"What do you know about ectoplasm?" Mulder still had childhood summer camp recollections when he talked to William about UFOs or shared ghost stories.

"Well," William chewed the apple in his mouth. "Ghosts use it to become solid or take on a visual appearance. It's like their energy source. It comes from the living, but spirits use it to become visible or to achieve a tangible state. Professor Ray Stantz once collected seven gallons of the stuff during a haunting at the New York City Public Library."

"Has it ever appeared in connection to a possession?"

"Uh, 1958, Emerson, New Jersey…" Collins tossed his partially eaten apple core to the trashcan in the corner of his kitchen. "Parapsychologist David Ash documented traces of ectoplasm which appeared in the vicinity of a girl who believed she was possessed by the devil. When she died as a result of her experience, she was found covered in the material."

"So what exactly is it?"

"It's basically a physical externalization of thought." William wished he had his book by Dr. Lionel Barrett, but instead he tried to recall it by memory. "It appears wherever there has been a massive amount of paranormal energy. You see, human beings exude warmth, energy and emotion and these energies bond with the environment and location with which these people were associated in life and results in place memories which in turn can contribute to surviving consciousnesses, also know as ghosts and spirits, but these are usually the astral spirits of people who have died. By drawing upon the ectoplasm left behind after death or by other living things, spirits have the capacity to take on a semblance of existing as living beings. I remember a case at the Hampton Plantation near Baltimore where…" He was rambling again.

"Theoretical situation." Mulder cut him off in his expected usual rambling and now started improvising to avoid William's pre-marital infatuation with his female partner. "A person vanishes from a locked room and there's ectoplasm present. Could she have been shunted into another plane of existence?"

"Sounds more like she experienced a very powerful presence." Collins answered.

"Would you get off the phone and get up here and make me happy?!" Ally McBeal-Collins screamed down the stairs in her house to her husband.

"Is that Ally?" Mulder heard the scream. "Is she trying to get pregnant again?"

"She knows about my vasectomy." William answered. "Look, I'm between cases right now. Can I come out and help you on yours?"

"I can't…" Mulder spoke from his hotel room. "I'm afraid of what your wife would do if she discovered what I did."

"Great….."

"Thanks for the notes…" Mulder looked to what he had scribbled from the phone call. Ectoplasm was created by the living. It was the physical externalization of psychic activity. Whatever had happened to Dana had to have released a lot of energy, both psychic and physical. He started thinking through his hypothesis of how these former fictional icons were appearing around the globe then thickly underlined the word "ectoplasm" twice in his book.


	6. Chapter 6

While garbed in the civilian disguise of his human identity, the man known as Clark Kent and as the extra-terrestrial champion named Kal-El had walked upon the Earth of this reality along with the other mortal denizens that called it home. In the air, they barely cocked their heads up to the heavens and thought he was a god while the skeptical thought he was an illusion or merely the after image of a dream hoping for real heroes in a world swollen with suffering. Or maybe they thought he was a really good optical illusion promoting another comic book movie. Clark had seen some of those movies. Back home, he had experienced dreams where he really was just an actor playing a role, but here, he was a fictional American icon, the emblem and archetype of the quintessential superhero, worshipped and respected in two worlds, one where he was quite real and here where he was a fictional character given life through actors and special effects. He wasn't sure if the writers and authors of those comics were guiding his life through its ups and downs or if they were merely getting prophetic images of his life through the veil between both worlds. The latter idea had the most merit because all though he and his friends had seen their exploits separated by two publishers dividing and separating their lives on this world, he did closely know characters named Captain America and Spiderman, and instead of telling the true stories, DC Comics had made up like characters to mask the friends Clark knew and cared about in their publications while the movies merely twisted the facts in actual incidents which had already occurred otherwise. Although the thought of his life being displayed for entertainment irked him on one level, seeing a world where his identity was known and he didn't have to worry about reprisal from his enemies was a welcome change. George Reeves had captured his presence and Christopher Reeve had touched on his humanity. Dean Cain displayed his soul and conviction, and Brandon Routh had exposed his anxieties. Younger actors like John Haymes Newton and Tom Welling had brought to life aspects of one of his alternate reality counterparts, a younger more idealistic version of himself. When told of these movie depictions of their lives, his friend Bruce wasn't even interested in hearing about anyone named Adam West or Michael Keaton.

Briefly separated from his native reality, the Man of Steel mused less on the fictional trivialities of his life in this world created in the name of entertainment and continued patrolling the sky over Salt Lake City, Utah. As Clark Kent, he had no identity in this world except as a once fictional icon and that left him mostly escaping to the sky and trying to give hope to other people, even if they refused to believe he was the real deal, the real true Superman, the actual character possibly freed into this world through the portal of the comic book. Lazy and stupid criminals and potential terrorists graduated from street gangs were no matches for a hero used to galactic menaces and criminal masterminds with unlimited resources.

A screaming electric pitch struck the inside of the hero's head and he suddenly froze alight over the Great Salt Lake, his body held elevated by the ambient energies of solar energy giving him his propulsion. The sun was dropping in the west on the horizon and the transplanted hero from another universe stopped, cocked his head and looked around. Only one man had contacted him like this once before, and to think he had escaped here with him to take advantage of this vulnerable reality scared him like a young boy in the dark with a closet filled with monsters.

"Forgive me for contacting you like this, but…" The voice of Fox Mulder came over the ultra-high sonic level to his ears. "…I knew no other way… I am transmitting this high frequency message from the roof of the Marriott Hotel in Las Vegas over the NASA satellite now in orbit over the American Southwest…"

Clark instinctively turned southwest and aimed himself for Las Vegas. He began accelerating toward a hundred miles an hour just short of creating a sonic boom behind him.

"Anything?" From the roof of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, Mulder looked to Christensen from the CIA with his briefcase of gear and radar equipment sending their message into space.

"Negative."

"Put it on a loop and replay it again." Mulder checked the power outage and frequency level. This gear was possibly screwing up TV reception within a three-block radius, but the local civilians would have to bear with a little interference through their Discovery Channel reruns for a while longer. Mulder cocked his head to the skies for any anomalous figures or shapes.

Over Northern Nevada, sheep ranchers cocked their heads to the sky as a vast wind surged through the air above them. For a moment, they wondered what it was then proceeded on with their business.

"My contact at NASA says we've got to get off this channel." Christensen looked to Mulder.

"How much more time can we have?"

"You can turn it off now." Another voice replied on the roof. Mulder and Christensen turned their heads over behind them. It looked like Christopher Reeve as he looked in life, once again in the role that made him famous. His cape swaying side to side, hanging from his shoulders just six inches off the roof of the hotel, he strolled over to Christensen laptop and tapped a button to turn off the high-frequency message. Standing up straight, he crossed his arms before the symbol on his chest.

"Gentlemen…" The man of steel acknowledged the two government agents. "You went through a lot of trouble to get a hold of me. What can I do for you?"

Mulder dropped his jaw speechless. Christensen stood frozen where he was a blinked slowly unsure of what he was seeing. Every question in the world flew out of their heads. This crazy scheme had worked! They had not only plucked this character from the ether of the universe, but he was willing to talk to them!

"So…" Mulder didn't know how to act before someone who was the quintessential superhero but also an extra-terrestrial. "How do you like our universe?"

"Well," Clark looked around a bit amused and intrigued by the agent's curiosity. "Your atmosphere's polluted, you've got a hole in the ozone layer, the overall climate is warmer and your people here seem to be losing so much hope in good that they're creating their own reasons for things going wrong all the time, but other than that… I like it. It shows potential that is not being reached, but your leaders are so busy fighting with each other than to actually fix anything wrong with society. They're giving too much power to the rich while most Americans can't even afford food or even medical coverage."

"You sure hit it on the head." Christensen looked to Mulder.

"But you didn't really bring me here to ask me that, did you?" Clark paced a bit past Mulder trying to figure him out.

"Why are you in our world?" Christensen asked the question.

"Well," The man of steel lightly turned away and lifted his head up. "As you guessed, there are countless alternate realities out there, each one outwardly identical except for varying historical points and the types of its denizens. An incident outside the timestream with a man Marvel Comics correctly knows as Kang, yet your DC Comics alternately calls the Lord of Time caused myself and my colleagues to be scattered far beyond the timestream." Clark turned to look at Mulder. "The majority of us, spread across the multiverse, but for some reason, this reality, pulling us together and recouping us all until we can reach our reality once more."

"Any reason why you think this happened?"

"One possibility…" Clark folded his arms together. "Your reality has fictionalized our lives, created adaptations of our exploits with random errors and odd plot points all in the name of artistic license, and yet, the fans of these stories hold on to our adventures, and want to believe in them. Your world is crying out for heroes like a lantern directing us halfway to our way home."

"Our world is in a sad state…" Christensen remarked out loud as winds buffeted the hotel rooftop. "But we're trying…"

"The Oklahoma bombing, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina…" Clark spoke up. "Your leaders aren't doing enough. You've got a TV network devoted to nothing but man's inhumanity to man, but not enough to inspire mortal man. When people turn to comic books for hope because they've lost faith in law enforcement and the government… your modern civilization is degrading in the same downward spiral of the Roman Empire; it's no wonder that everyone I've tried to help here since I arrived has reacted in confusion. Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it."

"You've not just been arriving here." Mulder broke in with his discovery. "You're still trapped in time and space. Your essence and that of all the friends and colleagues you know have been taking physical bodies to exist here. As far as our leaders not doing enough, you're correct. We need to do more than just learning new science. We need to give hope and stop putting restrictions upon people's lives; I think that's what drives people more into hopelessness and despair than anything else."

"I wish we could stay and help." Clark turned his head looking for promise in this reality. "But we could vanish for home tomorrow or next week and then… several people here will lose hope all over again."

"They won't know you're gone." Mulder pointed out. "They'll just realize they haven't seen you. I think you and your friends appearing here have done a lot for the innocents here. To give hope sometimes, you have to inspire it."

"Helen Slater?" A female voice joined the trio of men's voices on the rooftop. "I mean, she's a gifted actress, but she's short, thin, skinny, kind of flat-chested… Was Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman not available?" Superman's cousin dropped down from over their heads holding a VHS copy of the 1982 Supergirl movie. Mulder and Christensen looked to her and recognized her for who she once was. Clark just mused a bit and turned his head away trying to hide a smirk. Kara had always seen herself played by a big-budget actress, and now that she had found a world that had actually done so, she was not the least impressed.

"Kal-El, have you got a problem here?" She stood across from her cousin with the video in her hand.

"Oh my god, Scully…" Mulder looked upon his partner. She was blonde now, her blue eyes more vibrant and her incredible figure heightened by the blue, red and yellow costume outlining it. Realizing the agent's intrigued and studious interest in her appearance, Kara looked toward her cousin with warmth and compassion not exuded before by the woman she once was. Christensen snapped a shot of Scully overwhelmed and enlightened by Supergirl's image with his hand-held camera-phone.

"You're in the body of his partner."

"It looks good." Kara looked to herself then to Mulder. "Does she work out?"

"She's never going to believe this." Christensen rechecked his photos on his phone then snapped another.

"Who does she look like in your world?" Mulder wondered out loud.

"Like that…" Clark pointed at his effervescent cousin. Kara just grinned and pretended to look away.

"I need my partner back." Mulder turned again to Clark. "She was supposed to be in Toronto yesterday. The bureau will do an investigation of she doesn't show up with an explanation. They will not accept extra-dimensional possession as an excuse."

"Don't confuse them with reality…" Clark cocked his head to other voices he was hearing. "Tell them she was detained by a suspect…" He felt his presence growing dimmer. "Sometimes, the most simple explanations are the best ones…. Oh, and agent, the best intentions often begin with a single step in the right direction."

Mulder heard the movie cassette hitting the stone roof of the hotel. He looked to Kara as her appearance started fading away from the person she was. Her blonde hair was turning red. Her costume breaking and dissipating to nothingness, the apparel of Dana Scully started becoming even more obvious. Her hand reached to her head as if she had a headache and she looked to her hand realizing what it could do as if everything she had once done was a mere dream. Across the country and beyond, more and more individuals started finding themselves in weird locations far from home. Phil Diffy and Keely Teslow found themselves in St. Louis, Missouri far from their native Pickford. Jamison Collins found himself in Seattle, Washington with no memory of how she got there. Maddie Fitzpatrick found herself looking up at the Statue of Liberty in New York Bay. Jackson Stewart watched the fading image of Thor vanish from his reflection in a Chicago marquee. Lawyer William Thomas forgot the magic word of Billy Batson and looked up to the Eiffel Tower and housewife Cheryl Belushi rushed for a Toronto phone booth as her skin tone and bust size returned to normal from green and enhanced. In Miami, Florida, George Michael Bluth recognized his Cousin Maeby and rushed to her looking for answers. No one was sure what had happened, but it was sure that it was a massive paranormal experience.

"Scully, are you okay?" Mulder held his partner on her feet.

"O-okay…" She looked around gathering her bearings. "Where am I? How'd I get here?"

"You've just…" Mulder tried to keep it simple like Clark had suggested. "You've sort of been sleepwalking."

"Wish I could have gone with them…" Christensen looked around the warm Las Vegas night sky then toward where the man of steel once was. In his place was a large African American man with a baldhead and stout build. Clad in a loud yellow shirt and khaki pants, his confused and bewildered face looked round trying to figure out where he was.

"Wait a second…" He started figuring things out. "This ain't San Francisco. How'd I get here?'

"Jeff Christensen, CIA…" Christensen started by flashing his identification. "Sir, you've just been an unwilling participant in a vast sleepwalking experience. If you can give me your name and address, the bureau will safely guide your way back home."

"Victor Baxter, I run the Chill Grill Restaurant in San Fran…." Victor recognized the Mirage Hotel down the street. "Is this Las Vegas? Can I hit the crap tables before we go?"

"Mulder…" Dana looked to Mulder. "You have to tell me the truth this time. What happened to me?"

"Okay…" Mulder started. "But this time you have to be even more open-minded…." He looked briefly up to the sky. Somewhere out there, even over the proverbial rainbow laid the truth, a reality where superhuman heroes and vigilantes existed - a world where extra-terrestrial activity and supernatural phenomenon occurred everywhere. Peter Parker caught the Empire State Building with his web and looked across the bay into Gotham City, New Jersey. The god Hercules told his father of a reality that needed him to return to it, but Zeus confided in him that world was beyond even his reach. Lois Lane-Kent finally got a message from her missing husband, and at Stark Enterprises, Edwin Jarvis and Alfred Pennyworth recognized their missing employers.

"I'll be home in a minute, honey." Clark told his little Teri Hatcher look-alike over his cell phone and looked over to Doctor Stephen Strange brooding over his Eye of Agamotto, a large crystal ball encased in an ornate gold tableau. A minute ago, Strange had been quite alone, but after the lights went back on, he was gazing upon Superman, Thor, Captain Marvel and Captain America in his attic, four of the greatest heroes this reality had to offer.

"Thor, thank your father for the energies he donated to return you back to this plane of existence." Strange rather resembled an actor named Mandy Patinkin from that other reality.

"That world…." Marvel realized where he was. "No gods, no Atlanteans, no Eternals, no… heroes, we have to find a way back. They need help."

"Even now the Cosmic Axis is realigning itself once more." Strange collapsed weary from anchoring his friends and allies to their native reality. "There will be no way back. Other divergent realities block the way…"

"The Omniverse…" Steve Rogers pulled his mask off his face. "All those…

"There is no Omniverse…." Strange corrected him. "That term was created by those writers to separate their fictions. There are parallel worlds and divergent earths on different levels of existence. Breaking through them is not like visiting Olympus…" He looked at Thor. "Or Asgard for that matter."

"Those mortals are on a path to their own destruction." Thor revealed the obvious. "These eyes have seen it before: the Romans, the Mayans, the Phoenicians…. countless civilizations destroying themselves. I found no trace of immortals there."

"They have the potential to save themselves…" Strange stroked his goatee and pondered over all the possible timelines. "If but they seek the way…."

END


End file.
